


do you remember?

by chemicalflashes



Series: Instrumentality + What Now? [5]
Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion
Genre: F/M, Post-Canon, Post-The End of Evangelion, Post-Third Impact, and remembering stuff, angsty as usual, just them talking, the point is they need to talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-30
Updated: 2019-06-30
Packaged: 2020-05-31 07:27:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19421290
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chemicalflashes/pseuds/chemicalflashes
Summary: “Do you remember when we caught a falling god in our hands? And then Misato took us out to a cheap ramen stand because that lady was legitimately bankrupt. Do you remember when they stripped us and made us walk through a corridor and then a while later abandoned us in our entry plugs for almost three hours? And then we talked about inane things?”Burying memories is man's way of surviving. But there are some things a man should never forget. In which Asuka Langley Soryu and Shinji Ikari deal with the past. Somewhat. Nothing is sure these days.





	do you remember?

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shinjeeeeeeeeeeee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shinjeeeeeeeeeeee/gifts).



> Uh, Part V finally, I guess...
> 
> Dedicated to my _very rational_ friend. Thank you so much for everything, bruh. T_T

The smoke of a cigarette is a flimsy thing: it emerges smoothly, floats for a while and then vanishes entirely, the only evidence of its existence the smell that it leaves behind, like a memory that won’t leave your mind. There’s a lot of smoke here and a boy stands in the midst of it all. He feels like the smoke that surrounds him – hollow, listless and aimless. There is no sense of direction. His compass failed some time ago.

The scene is dreary and a giant head lies on the horizon, elevated by rocks protruding out of the red sea. The boy watches the giant head, the petrified statues that lie scattered in the landscape and the red ring that is splattered on the moon. There’s no hope here.

There’s another character in this scene: a redheaded girl who sits on the shore and watches the boy smoke away cigarette after cigarette. Her name is Asuka and she isn’t sure about what she should be doing right now. She used to be confident and very sure herself some while ago but now she has no idea of what to do and how to go about life in general. There is nothing to do in this barren wasteland. There is nobody else to look at except the stupid boy standing a few metres away from her.

Shinji, the idiot, the Third Child, her useless roommate, the biggest pervert she knows…

He’s the only one she has for company here in this forsaken world. In the dark evening, there are no birds flying home. This is Earth but it feels like she is standing under an alien sky. The wind flutters her hair and some of it falls into her eyes but she doesn’t bother to remove the strands.

Asuka just watches. It’s all that she can do now.

So the ex-pilot of Unit 02 sits and watches Shinji Ikari drown in the smoke from his cigarette and the voices that reside in his head. She isn’t definite about what she feels about him doing this activity. Her biggest crush – Ryoji Kaji – used to do this thing but she had not minded it. Kaji was a cool person, the only _real_ man in her life, or so she had thought back then. She doesn’t want to remember it all…it’s still too fresh and the memories cut open wounds she had thought to be healed.

Now Shinji has turned around and he is watching her. Watching her watch him but his eyes are vacant and his face is lost in the haze of a time that seems so long ago and yet simultaneously seems like it happened only hours before. He isn’t actually watching her. He never did.

Maybe, she thinks, maybe she resents him.

But of course, that’s a lie. ‘Resent’ is too soft for what Asuka Langley Soryu feels about the Third Child. She hates him. She hates his guts. She hates what he did over her in a locked hospital room. She hates how he was a different person in his Eva.

But…but she knows she doesn’t hate him, not really. Not after all that has happened and all that they have seen to be here on this abandoned beach. All of these are lies. Resentment is a lie. Hate is a lie. The truth is that she doesn’t know what she feels. But she is trying…to understand, both him and herself. She really is trying and oh god, why do these tears always come to taunt her these days?

She sniffs quietly and wipes away the offending liquid from her eyes with her frock before it manages to pour down her cheeks. Asuka stands up slowly and walks over to him. He doesn’t notice it and she knows that. He has just emerged from a bout of fever due to who knows what and it is imperative that she stops him. From her spot on the shore, she has watched him burn away five cigarettes up until now and it is only logical that she should be stopping him from continuing.

Shinji has never smoked before her but from the way his hands are not fumbling with the lighter, even in the presence of the light sea breeze, makes it more than clear that he has done it before. She suspects he has only picked it up recently…after the Impact, or she would have definitely heard from Misato about ‘poor Shinji going the wrong way’.

No, this is recent. The Impact did this to him.

“Shinji,” she says. He looks at her, through her and into the view behind her. The vacancy pierces through her body. There is no response. She tries again. “Shinji, you have got to stop now.” It comes a bit more forcefully than she had intended.

There is a flicker of recognition in his eyes, like he has just been pulled out from some dream world, which is how it exactly is. He frowns and pulls the nearly finished cigarette out of his lips.

“Asuka.” A pause and a momentary glance downwards. “Oh…”

She continues staring at him. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realise…I don’t know what came over me…” he tells her as he tosses the burnt stump into the sand.

Her glare intensifies. “I think that smoking cigarettes isn’t ideal after emerging from a fever.”

Shinji looks at her and has the decency to look guilty. “I just don’t want to hear them for a while, even if it is a short while. These help…I am tired of it all.”

‘Aren’t both of us?’ she wants to ask, but she doesn’t. She holds back her words. She knows who ‘them’ are and how they are stuck in his head. The silence between them is broken by the waves of the red sea.

“H-how long have you been watching me?”

“Ever since I asked you to come out of the tent but I don’t think you remember. It’s been an hour, at the very least.”

“Oh…” He trails off. What is he supposed to say or do?

“Look, why don’t you go make dinner today? You have just been having soup for the past two days and I am bored of it too. Something solid would be nice.”

‘Something solid’ means either instant noodles or dry cereal but Shinji is glad she isn’t questioning him anymore about this new habit of his. He feels grateful.

* * *

Dinner is a quiet affair as usual.

The fire burns between them and they eat in silence. There is a light breeze in the air but it manages to be very cold. Asuka shivers. Are they even meant to survive in this wasteland? Why did they come back? To just die in the cold?

Shinji’s meal is finished before hers and now he sits and just watches the fire. It splutters every now and then but manages to stay. She thinks she should say something. She did promise to herself that she would try to understand him…because he has been trying too, in his own messed up, incompetent Shinji way.

“Do you remember?”

He isn’t in a daze this time so he looks at her immediately.

“Do I remember what?”

“Before…before it all went away. Before we became sad…”

“I do…but I never think about it much.”

She rests her elbows on her knees, leans forward and rests the entire weight of her head on her hands. “Well, what do you remember? What do you keep hearing?”

He gulps in air and glances out towards the sea. Maybe she shouldn’t have asked this…it’s too much of a sensitive matter after all, maybe –

“I mostly hear Misato,” he almost whispers. Shinji has returned to looking at her. His voice is even quieter now. “Or Kaworu…or very rarely, Ayanami.”

Asuka doesn’t know what to make of this. She never knows anything these days and she hates it. So she asks another question.

“Wasn’t Kaworu the Fifth Child? I think I saw him in…there.”

“Yeah, yeah he was. Kaworu Nagisa. I had to kill him.”

She almost jerks away in shock but she still has control over herself. He is staring at his open palms now. They carry pink wounds.

“Why?”

“I crushed him with these hands…because he was the final angel, the Seventeenth. He betrayed my feelings.”

“Why do you think that?”

“Because I thought he was my true friend, the only one who understood me back then. I had no one left. There was no one to talk to…you were gone, Ayanami scared me and Misato seemed so distant. There was no one at all.” His voice cracks. “He told me he loved me. Nobody had ever told me that before. But then he revealed himself as an angel and…and I had to kill him.”

Shinji is crying now. His face is buried in his hands and the breeze blows the sand around him. Asuka hadn’t wanted it to come to this. She really doesn’t know anything. Somehow, she feels like crying too.

“I loved him too.” His cries just intensify after that.

So the girl does what her instincts order her and walks over to him. She sits beside him and strokes his back.

“I just am so tired of it all,” he manages to say between sobs. “I am no one and I shouldn’t be here. I just have let everyone down…but most of all, I don’t deserve your kindness, Asuka. I don’t think I should be here with you, drowning in my own patheticism. I just choose to sit here like dust, waiting to be washed away. I don’t deserve to live. I don’t deserve you. I am just some sad boy who cannot get out of his problems and look at others. I have always been dumb like that.”

“Some of that is correct,” she replies, still continuing to stroke his back. “You deserve better than this wasteland. Both of us do, in fact.” Her voice wavers a bit.

Shinji’s eyes widen for a second. “You’re too kind. Please never forgive me…for what I did to you.”

“I don’t think I can.”

He sighs. A strong gust blows out their bonfire at that precise moment and they watch it fight before ultimately dying out.

Asuka stands up and takes it all in: the desolate scenery, the darkness, the enormous head on the horizon and the whimpering boy at her feet.

“We should go to sleep. It’s getting too cold to be out now.”

She is glad he doesn’t spot her tears as they slip inside their tent.

* * *

When she lies beside him, she realises that they never really finish their conversations; it’s always an odd jumble of painful memories and depressing words which mostly come from him. Shinji lies in silence on her right and they look at the ceiling of the tent in a scene oddly reminiscent of their return from the sea of LCL. Her hair is sprawled out on the single pillow they have but he doesn’t complain. Her neural connectors are removed and she thinks she doesn’t want them anymore.

Everything of their old life has been eaten up by the sea. She isn’t some pilot of a giant weapon and he isn’t one any longer either. Her tears from a while ago have dried up now. Why she cries so easily now, she has no idea. What she does know is that her heart doesn’t feel heavy after doing so.

“Hey Shinji,” she speaks suddenly, “you awake?”

The part of the quilt lying on him moves ever so slightly. “...Yeah.” His breathing is still ragged and his voice is rough.

“Do you want to hear about what I remember?”

“I guess…”

Asuka wants to scoff at his half-hearted reply but she resists.

“Okay. I mostly remember about the time the Fifteenth attacked my mind and the time when…Unit 02 was devoured or my mother, but sometimes, I remember the times we all were happy and those memories make me much sadder than the bad ones.”

Something in her statement makes Shinji turn to his side and face her as she continues watching the ceiling up above. “Why do you think that is?”

“Do you remember that time we crawled through the air ducts at Nerv because the electricity was gone? And how we literally did the same in our Evas? All three of us, you, me and Wondergirl. And then I fell on you.”

She doesn’t bother to hide her tears this time and he can see her eyes glistening in the low light that enters the tent from the outside. But he thinks she is smiling too. He isn’t sure.

“Yeah…I remember.”

Her voice is very soft now, like a baby’s who just wants to rest. “Do you remember when we caught a falling god in our hands? And then Misato took us out to a cheap ramen stand because that lady was legitimately bankrupt.” She is definitely smiling now but her tears continue too. “Do you remember when they stripped us and made us walk through a corridor and then a while later abandoned us in our entry plugs for almost three hours? And then we talked about inane things?”

“Yes, I do.”

“I just get sad it all ended like this…”

He doesn’t reply. Voices haunt him, telling it’s all his fault but then –

“Do you remember…when we kissed?”

He freezes. The voices halt in a sudden instant and he nods eventually.

“In the end we both hurt each, didn’t we?”

Shinji holds her, loose and tentative like always, ever since he has begun doing this while they sleep.

“That’s right,” he tells her but his words have no malice in them. “I think that’s what humans are supposed to do to each other.”

Asuka sighs. “We are supposed to understand each other too.”

His grip tightens on her waist. She shivers in spite of the warmth of the quilt and the sheets.

“It’s hard, but I have decided I will keep trying until I get it right.”

She leans into his hold unconsciously.

“Thank you for that…and for remembering.”

He doesn’t know what he feels as he sees her lying almost inside the furrow of his neck, her eyes closed and her stance vulnerable, but what he does know is that he wants to change and be someone better.

Her voice is fading now and sleep overtakes her rapidly. It’s a faint whisper but he is sure he isn’t hallucinating it.

“And thanks for holding me…”

* * *

Asuka is dreaming, or rather, she is remembering.

Misato’s apartment is shrouded in darkness and things lie scattered all over the place. There is no one here besides her and her anger. She throws herself on her bed and punches the pillow. Her legs thrash around and crease the bedsheet more and more until she finally stops.

She doesn’t want to know Wondergirl is alright. She had just wanted to win but then that _invincible_ Shinji had to come back and torment her when she was helpless. The girls didn’t need to do anything; _Shinji_ was more than enough for fighting against the angels. Misato didn’t care for her. Even Kaji didn’t care for her. They just wanted Shinji.

So they could have him. _Great_ that he got absorbed into his pathetic, test-type Eva. Good riddance.

And so, she carries on. She and Misato don’t talk much to each other ever since he has disappeared and usually end up making their own food. Asuka goes to school like nothing has happened and everyone asks her about what happened to him. She just grins and tells everyone he died.

He is dead for all that she cares. Doctor Akagi’s tricks will not bring him back.

But…

But…

But she takes in the ruined state of their apartment…their _home_ and she curses him for disappearing. She calls him an idiot, a pervert and a kid who just got lucky. A wimp, a coward and clueless. His eyes flash in her mind. They are blue like hers, but much more dark.

She hates him.

* * *

When she wakes up with a jolt, Shinji is still beside her.

Clearly, she cannot sleep. This is becoming the usual quite quickly. So she sits up and watches him murmur in his sleep, which has become the usual for him.

A smell of cigarette smoke and ash hangs in the stagnant air inside their tent but she does not feel suffocated, not yet, anyway. The smell clings to him. Sweat droplets have formed on his forehead and they run down and drop onto the mattress. Well, at least his fever from the day before yesterday seems to have finally gone for good.

The day before yesterday...when he had burnt a shop with his lighter which who knows how he managed to find in the mangled remains of Tokyo-3. Asuka notices his breath has evened a little since before and notes the rhythmic rise and fall of his chest. He is murmuring and talking with himself (or is it really himself when he does answer voices?) but the pronunciation has become a little bit messy now. She tugs the quilt and the sheets higher up on him. It’s pretty cold tonight.

(She tells herself that she cannot leave him to die, even if she is angry at him and even if others return...because he did help her, even if she didn’t see it back then; even if it had been less than the amount of help she needed at that point.

Words of the fifteenth angel bark at her, telling her that that is a lie and that he never helped her.)

“Shut up,” she tells to no one in particular.

Beside her, Shinji continues living in his dreams. He has no idea that she is awake and trying to listen in to every word that manages to leave his lips. Asuka smiles down at him, she remembers what they talked about just before they went to sleep.

She will always remember.

“You were always an idiot.”

But the words simply _are_ , just like the sea outside and the blood stained moon. They exist without any intent to hurt and float in the air between them, harmless.

* * *

When Shinji wakes up in the morning, he spots her on the shore. Her hair is free and her clips are nowhere in sight. The wind blows strongly and the orange waves crash at her feet.

He sits beside her. They are together in this.

The silence between them is companionable.

**Author's Note:**

> What do you think?


End file.
